Jews Don't Count

A quick and accessible read, with a tone both breezy and deeply sardonic, redolent of the particular pain to which most progressive and left-leaning Jews can relate: one of being continually obscured, erased, occluded, dismissed, and gaslit about our experiences, while also doing our utmost to stay on the “right side of history” where progressive values are concerned. A good book, though one whose readership I feel relatively sure will be 95% Jewish. I fear that those who really need to hear what this book is saying – non-Jewish progressives who are more or less ignorant about antisemitism – will mostly dismiss it out of hand, which is a shame.

Baddiel does an excellent job of deconstructing and making plain the very complex layers of racism, xenophobia, anti-Judaism, conspiratorial thinking, and general anxiety that comprise antisemitism as a phenomenon, and does his level best to explain to the reader why they should bother to care about it, as they (presumably, hopefully) care about other types of bigotry.

I can't say this is a perfect book (hence my rating); other reviews have discussed its rhetorical and narrative shortcomings (the remark about it reading like a transcribed voice memo was a bit harsh, but honestly? Not far off the mark). Nevertheless, in a dearth of easily accessibly writing on the subject, I'd say it's still definitely worth reading.